An award-winning journalist in Ohio, Kentucky and South Carolina, Carey has covered everything from investigative journalism to government to education, and everything in between.
Whether it’s writing about the stripper mistress of a former city treasurer in Florence, Ky who embezzled millions to support his girlfriend, or what it’s like to go in to a burning building as a firefighter, or corruption in county government, or a wayward donkey who found a home at a South Carolina elementary school, Carey has been telling the stories of people, places and things that make life interesting.
Now a freelance writer, she contributes to magazines from Duluth, Minnesota to Charleston, South Carolina, covering everything from “Hauntrepreneurs” (people who create haunted houses for a living) to high school fishing teams to micro-distilleries in the Northland of Minnesota. She is a regular contributing writer for The Daily Yonder, Daily Energy Insider, WorkersCompensation.com and Business Lexington.
As an author, Carey published her children’s book “My Little Zombie” in 2016, and her history book “Hidden History of Anderson County” in 2017. She is currently working on a non-fiction book “Last Day on the Job – the looming unemployment of America” about the replacement of an estimated 47% of American jobs by automation. Two other books: “Murder, Mayhem and Moonshine,” about the seamier side of Kentucky history, and “SawgrassRose” a murder mystery set in South Carolina, are in the works.
Her blog – hellsfunnybelle.com – chronicles the life of a not so serious Southerner, who yearns to break free of the traditional Southern belle role, and dye her hair purple. With posts on writing, cooking, family and culture, her skewed view on the everyday aims to help people understand their lives and the lives of those around them a little bit better, and with a laugh or two along the way.
Carey graduated from Miami University and cut her teeth in journalism writing for Everybody’s News, Cincinnati’s original alternative newsweekly, before moving with the editor to Cincinnati CityBeat. After a brief career in marketing during the “Dot Bomb StartUp” phase, she went back to writing at the Community Press papers in Northern Kentucky and the east side of Cincinnati. Her column on “My Kentucky Kitchen” as well as her work in in-depth and investigative news there won more than half of her over 30 awards in writing, including being named one of Cincinnati’s Leading Women in Media in 2007.
Originally from Versailles, Kentucky, Carey lives in Lexington, Ky where she is involved with several non-profit organizations. Currently, she works from a home she shares with a dog, two cats.